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Curriculum

Clinical training

As a PGY-2 critical care resident, much of your time will be devoted to comprehensive training as a member of the interdisciplinary team. A breadth of learning experiences has been designed to increase and refine clinical competency, provide evidence-based pharmacotherapeutic care plans, and develop confidence as an independent practitioner.

Direct patient care services allow you to provide patient-specific pharmaceutical care services. Responsibilities include development of individualized care and monitoring plans for various patient populations. After coaching, instruction and modeling by a preceptor, you will be assessed and constructively critiqued on how to further refine the delivery of evidence-based recommendations.

Drug information is provided to patients, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other allied health professionals. Feedback is provided to enhance drug information-retrieval skills using a variety of resources and modalities.

Pharmacokinetic monitoring is provided to eligible patients. You will serve as an information resource by providing recommendations for appropriate assay procedures, evaluation of serum drug concentrations and appropriate documentation in the medical record.

Required rotations

The PGY-2 Pharmacy Residency in Critical Care at Mayo Clinic Hospital — Rochester is designed to provide a diverse experience for the future clinician. These rotations are required:

Area

Length

Department orientation

4 weeks

Coronary care unit

4 weeks

Medical intensive care unit

8 weeks

Nutrition

4 weeks

Research and medication use evaluation

4 weeks

Surgical and trauma intensive care unit

8 weeks

Elective rotations

The elective rotations available allow residents to tailor the learning experience to their needs. You may choose any of the following:

Cardiothoracic transplantation

Cardiovascular surgery

Emergency medicine

Immunocompromised intensive care unit

Infectious diseases intensive care unit

Nephrology intensive care unit

Neurology intensive care unit

Nontrauma surgical intensive care unit

Solid organ transplantation

Teaching requirements and opportunities

Patient case conference

Residents present up to three patient cases throughout the academic year that focus on development of critical thinking and team-based problem-solving skills.

Patient case presentations focus on inclusion of all necessary components of a case, including workup of the patient, differential diagnoses, and treatment and monitoring plans; incorporation of clinical teaching points; and the ability of the presenter to ask open-ended questions of audience members to facilitate high-level clinical reasoning.

Residents are formally evaluated by pharmacy students, resident colleagues and clinical pharmacy preceptors. First- and second-year medical students from Mayo Medical School also attend to simulate team-based learning.

Presentations

You are required to provide multiple formal continuing education presentations throughout the academic year at Pharmacy Grand Rounds. Required presentations typically include a patient case with review of the literature, a journal club and a controversial pharmacy topic, though these may be tailored to optimize the learning experience.

Formal evaluations on presentation skills are provided for continual development. Residents may have additional presentation requests by the interdisciplinary team while on rotation. Additionally, you will be required to deliver a one-hour Grand Rounds continuing education presentation in the spring of the academic year.

Teaching certificate and precepting opportunities

A workshop is required for all residents to gain firsthand knowledge and development of teaching skills. The workshop highlights principles of pedagogy, matching teaching goals to classroom and testing activities, assessment of educational outcomes, and practice pearls for clinical teaching. Submission of a teaching philosophy and example learning experiences with evaluations are required for a certificate.

Under the tutelage of a preceptor, residents are afforded the opportunity to precept summer interns, APPE students and medical students from Mayo College of Medicine. Additionally, the PGY-2 critical care resident serves as a co-preceptor to a PGY-1 resident during a medical ICU rotation. Evaluation and feedback on your precepting skills is provided by a mentor to ensure continual teaching development.

Practice committees

You will have the opportunity to participate on institutional committees to optimize the residency training experience. Through this experience, you will gain appreciation for consensus-building and provide valuable input into practice decisions. A preceptor or committee member typically attends all meetings with you to provide guidance throughout the year.

Research project and resources

As a collaborative effort with an experienced mentor, trainees conduct at least one clinical research project to develop skills to ask and answer practice questions unexplored by the literature.

In addition, research training is gained through the pharmacy research curriculum. The research curriculum includes 24 live or online modules designed to complement the application of learned skills via the research project. Key modules include but are not limited to:

Introduction to research

Protecting human research participants training

Authorship considerations and guidelines

Institutional Review Board introduction and submission considerations

Development and writing of a research proposal and protocol

Research timeline management

Research methodology

Database development and basics of data management

Introductory course on statistical software

Advanced statistical analysis courses

Abstract, poster, and manuscript preparation and writing

A partnership established between the Department of Pharmacy Services and the Division of Biomedical Statistics & Informatics provides a dedicated biostatistician for pharmacy resident consultation. Upfront collaboration with these experts assists in the refinement of the study question, methodology, statistical sample size calculation and justification, and plans for data analysis.

You will be encouraged to publish the results of your research in a peer-reviewed journal and will have time devoted specifically to your research project during the academic year.

Medication use evaluation

All residents are required to complete a medication use evaluation (MUE) during the residency year. The goal of the MUE is to develop a systematic process designed to determine and maintain the appropriate and effective use of medications. A mentor will be assigned to help you with the MUE project.

Quality improvement training

Mayo Clinic and the Department of Pharmacy Services focus significant time and resources on quality improvement education and training. The Quality Academy at Mayo Clinic provides a broad-based quality management curriculum. Web-based or live team courses on quality improvement methodologies are offered to all residents to supplement their learning experience.

Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) certification are required for PGY-2 critical care residents. Education and training for BLS and ACLS are provided free of charge.

An additional pharmacy department orientation on code cart basics is required for residents who carry housewide code pagers. Various pharmacy residents and pharmacists are assigned code pagers throughout the year.

Required learning experiences may be augmented through training at the Mayo Clinic Multidisciplinary Simulation Center. Simulation-based education provides a controlled or simulated environment created to imitate real-life patient care settings where learners can practice and master skills without putting patients at risk.

Professional travel

During your residency, you will have the opportunity to attend professional meetings for the purpose of networking, professional development and service to the profession. Funding for travel-related expenses, such as airfare, hotel and registration fees, is provided by the residency program.

PGY-2 residents are required to attend the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting. Additional meetings are based on the discretion of the residency program and available funds. Typically, residents are allotted a maximum of 10 professional travel days a year.

Service commitment

All PGY-2 residents provide approximately 16 hours of staffing a month. Staffing may include a combination of weekend and evening experiences to maintain operational and clinical pharmacy competency and knowledge. No formal on-call program exists.

Evaluation

Core standards for resident performance have been established by ASHP to provide clear expectations. The ResiTrak evaluation system is used to ensure that you will receive ongoing feedback that facilitates the development of your skills throughout the year. This feedback utilizes consistent assessment criteria and provides a mechanism to improve your skills.

In addition to required rotation evaluations, residents have a one-on-one quarterly evaluation with their respective residency program director to document achievements and tailoring of the program to meet their needs. You will also be asked to evaluate each of your preceptors as well as each rotation to help improve the experience for future residents.

Graduation and certification

Upon successful completion of your residency, you will receive a certificate of completion from Mayo School of Health Sciences. To successfully complete a residency, you must:

Contribute to providing the best patient care and achieving the mission and goals of the pharmacy department

Obtain a minimum of 2,000 hours of training time during no fewer than 50 weeks

Complete all residency requirements and evaluations

Meet the behavioral objectives for each rotation and the program

Curriculum enhancements

Mayo School of Health Sciences is committed to developing and maintaining the best education programs. The curriculum and other aspects of this program are assessed constantly and changed as necessary to ensure the highest quality training.